Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Also, as a warning: This chapter (and the next) include brief conversations which brush upon the topic of suicide/assisted suicide. They don't take up a lot of the plot by any means, but I know that's a sensitive subject.

Chapter Seven

He inched away from her fairly soon after he stopped crying, and Lily Summoned a box of tissues from the desk and handed them to him. She ruffled his hair as she stood from the bed, the melancholy blue strands slipping through her fingers—he hadn't quite gotten control of his Metamorphmagus skills yet.

"Thanks," he said, after he had blown his nose and dropped a few tissues into the rubbish bin by his bed.

Lily nodded.

"You can talk now." He smiled in a small way and she returned it, but didn't say anything as she sorted Teddy's potions and replaced the tissue box on his bedside table.

"Lily?" He hesitated. "I didn't mean to—"

"Stop." She turned. "Merlin, you're ridiculous. I told you, didn't I, not to apologise to me. I promised you you could say anything and everything to me, and you can. I just don't think there's much I can say right now. Not much of worth, anyway. Anything I say will sound stupid and cliché. So let's just focus on you walking again. Everything might not be good, especially not right away, but it will be different, and I hope to hell that different will be better."

He blinked at her through tired grey eyes. "What happened to you, Lily?"

"What do you mean?" She poured a little bit of a violet liquid into a glass and added a few drops of calming solution, mixing them with a plastic coffee stirrer. The scent from the glass was sharp and strong, and she could feel her own pulse slow as she brought it to Teddy. He took it from her with one steady hand.

"What I said, about you not being eight anymore—that was only part of it. You're obviously not eight, but you're also not how I imagined you as a teenager. I sort of thought you'd be a younger version of James—but you're obviously much more serious than him, even more than Albus."

Lily shook her head. "It's just that you only see me when there's something serious happening. Like, you healing. That's serious, so I am too."

"You're trying to convince yourself of that." He sipped from the potion and made a face, lips twisted in against his teeth. Lily let out a small laugh and he continued, "But you forget that the last time I remember seeing you you were sitting with Hugo and Roxy in the garden, having a picnic with bread and butter and a jar of olives, and you had these black olives on all your tiny fingers and you were crying because you were laughing so hard. Roxy kept trying to lean in and snatch the olives with her teeth, but you held your hands over your head and wouldn't let her get at them. And that is, of course, you being a child, but it is also you not caring about anything. If I rewound you, as you are now, I doubt I would see that in your childhood."

Lily knew what had happened, of course. Teddy was what had happened, and then the intrigues of Slytherin House, but Teddy had paved the path to Slytherin for her. His silence had. She couldn't tell him that, of course. "I don't know, Teddy. People change. I guess I did, too. Finish your potion."

He rolled his eyes at her, but he swallowed the potion in a few gulps and handed the glass back to her. "This isn't finished, you know," he said, but the words ran together as the potion led him to sleep.

:::

Teddy was quiet the next morning as Ryan instructed him in therapy. They got him sitting up at the edge of his bed, his skinny legs bent and his feet placed on the wood floor. They'd softened the floor with a Charm so it wouldn't hurt his bare feet, which hadn't touched anything aside from the fabric of his bed sheets in nearly a decade. Ryan told him to just move his feet against the floor, without lifting himself from the bed, and seemed pleased when Teddy was able to. Teddy, though, said barely a word the whole time.

As soon as Ryan left Lily returned to Teddy's room and asked, "What's the matter?" hoping he understood the implied, "aside from the obvious."

He looked at his hands. He lifted them, held them out in front of him, and then he looked at Lily. His eyes were black and her heart stuttered for a few uncertain beats; he didn't look like the man she knew.

"I—" he began, but then a bird flew into his closed window with a sound like the bass from a Muggle pop song and the whoosh from the Floo whipped through Teddy's open door.

"Hey." Graham and Victoire appeared in the doorway a moment later, as Lily undid the latch on the window and pushed it open, leaning out to see the bird—a barn owl she recognised as Connor's owl Quentin—straightening its feathers on the grass outside.

"Come on," Lily reached her arm out the window and the bird flapped up and alighted there. She turned to see that Graham and Victoire had sat in their usual chairs, and that the three of them were watching her. Teddy's eyes were grey again.

"It's for me," she said, feeling a tight nervousness in her gut. She hadn't spoken to Connor since before Teddy had woken up. She had sent him a note, though, a single line reading, It worked. "Did you want anything before I leave you guys?"

"We're good," Graham answered, and Teddy nodded agreement.

"You sure, Ted?" Lily asked, hesitating by the doorway.

"Yeah, yeah, thanks." He looked away from her, to Graham, and Lily slipped from the room not at all reassured.

She fed Quentin some owl biscuits in the kitchen, and petted his ruffled head while slitting the seal on Connor's envelope.

Lily,

What kind of bullshit message was that? "It worked"? That is all I get, after I've been helping you all this time? Are you out of your mind? I want details! How did it work? How is Teddy? Are your parents mad at you? Has Victoire left Graham for him? Has Graham left Victoire for him? WHAT IS GOING ON?

You need to keep me more informed. Come out with me this weekend.

Lily set the note on fire without really thinking about it, dropping the paper in the sink so the ashes sizzled black against the stainless steel. Quentin hooted, shaking her hand from his head, and hopped over to stare at the smoking pile.

"Sorry, Quentin, I didn't mean to worry you. Here." Lily pulled a piece of parchment from a stack by the window and wrote a response to Connor. Sorry, it's been mad here, as I'm sure you can imagine. I'd love to go out with you, but I'm not sure if Saturday will work. I'll let you know! And then I'll tell you everything, I swear.

She handed the note to the owl, who gripped it in his beak and fluttered from the open kitchen window.

"Lil?" Victoire spoke from the hall, her voice shaking a little. "Can you come here?"

Lily pushed away from the counter and hurried toward Teddy's room. Victoire and Graham stood by the door, and Teddy was lying in his bed, hands fisted in his comforter. His lips were white-lined and his eyes were that spiralling black again. Lily felt like falling.

"What's wrong?" she asked Teddy. To her, at that moment, he was the only one who mattered. Victoire and Graham needed to be bigger in all of this.

"Nothing," sounding the way Lily did all that year when Ris and Bea and Hugo approached her.

"He wants us to stop visiting," Victoire explained, tears threatening at the edges of her words.

Graham shook his head as Teddy elaborated, "I just need a little while—a month or something—without seeing you both."

Lily winced. He could have worded that better. "But tell him, Lily," Graham pleaded. "Tell him that seeing us is good for his recovery. It is, isn't it?" His voice was like a push down her spine, a shove—but in what he would have considered the wrong direction.

"Not if he thinks he needs time away from you. You should give it to him—however much time he needs, you should give it to him."

"Bullshit." Victoire's voice snapped.

"Time is too important." Graham sounded small. "And we've already lost so much of it."

Lily glanced at Teddy. He was looking at his hands again.

"Can you come out here?" Lily nodded towards the hallway.

Victoire shook her head, and Graham said, "But this is about Teddy, we can't just leave him out of it."

"Fine, but he's already made his choice," Lily pointed out. "You're just prolonging the process. He needs time to adjust. That's hard to do when he's getting barely any time to himself."

"But we can't just leave." Victoire had taken Graham's hand, and Lily saw Teddy's eyes flicker shut behind them.

"You can," she said it softly, "You can, because you love him and you want him to be happy again."

"But..." Victoire began, and Graham squeezed her hand—Lily saw the tightening of his muscles, saw the reflexive tightening of Teddy's hands on his duvet.

"Will you send us a note every night, Lil? Just letting us know he's all right?"

Lily looked through the space between their shoulders to see Teddy nodding. She thought he would have agreed to writing the notes himself, if it had gotten them out of there. "Of course," was all she said. "Of course I will."

"Thank you." Graham glanced over his shoulder at Teddy. "We'll see you, Ted," and, keeping Victoire close to him, her hand still closed in his, he left the room.

Teddy let out a breath of air that sounded as if he'd been holding it since Victoire and Graham had arrived.

"Want some tea?" Lily offered, unsure of where she stood in this odd situation.

Teddy shook his head. "No." He breathed in and out, eyes still closed, and Lily heard the fire in the living room start up, heard Graham and Victoire's soft voices disappear under the rush of flames. Teddy finally sighed. "Thank you."

"Anytime. I'm your guard dog."

He tried to smile, but it broke on its way to the corners of his lips, so his mouth did this odd twisting thing and his eyes squeezed shut. "I hate myself," he managed, through this snarled mouth. "But I need, I really need, to get over her."

Lily crossed the room and sat on the edge of his bed. "No one else hates you. I said that you're allowed to feel whatever, and you are, but I don't want you to feel this way. Do you hate yourself for making other people feel bad?"

He nodded, eyes still shut.

"I get that. Merlin, I get it. And I'm sure it doesn't help to hear that nobody blames you. You probably want everyone to blame you. Why is everyone else always the bigger person, why are you always the selfish one? That's how I felt about it, feel about it, whatever." Teddy wasn't saying anything. His breath was light, Lily could feel it against her cheek, she was sitting that close to him. She reached for his hands again; they released the covers to link with her fingers.

"So here we go," Lily inhaled. "I am angry at you for being an idiot and brewing illegal potions. Most especially, I am angry at you for not taking care of that damn cut when you got it. I'm upset that you didn't think. I'm also upset that you were not in perfect health when I woke you up and that you are not happy now." Teddy's grip on her hands was so tight she thought he might break something. "However, I care more about you than I do about all of that anger and that is how I am able to sit here and tell you that I do not want you to hate yourself."

"But you don't even know me."

"We've been over this. Besides, I'm starting to. And," Lily leaned in closer to him, "I spent a lot of time with you these last couple of years. I sort of vented to you. And I know you didn't have a choice in the matter, but you helped me a lot. So," she pulled back, speaking at a normal level, "I understand that you hate yourself, but I think you shouldn't. Now, would you like to play a game of Exploding Snap with me, or should I leave you alone for a bit?"

"Fuck, you remind me of my grandmother." Teddy sighed, slid his hands from hers, and then started laughing into them. "I'm sorry," he said, when he was finally able to breathe again. "Merlin, that's probably the most insulting thing I can say to someone. Wow."

"I know your gran," Lily pointed out. "It's actually sort of nice. So long as you don't think I look like her." She hopped down from the bed and tugged open one of the drawers of the desk, searching for the deck of cards James had kept there.

Teddy was staring at her when she turned back around, cards in her hand. "No," he said, "no you don't look like her."

"Well, we're sorted then. Your deal?"

Teddy slowly scooted further towards the wall, and Lily sat cross-legged on his bed. He took the cards and began shuffling.

Later that night, Lily sent Graham and Victoire a message reading: Everything's fine. Sorry for the drama today, but I bet it'll help in the long run. (Which will hopefully not be that long.)

Neither Graham nor Victoire responded, but Lily's owl came back quickly.

:::

The absence of Teddy's usual visitors meant that Lily felt as if she needed to spend more time with Teddy than she had before, a possibly incorrect thought, but one that stuck with her regardless. She wrote Connor a letter about what had happened since Teddy woke up while sitting beside him. He was reading an old novel of James's and laughing to himself occasionally. Lily kept looking up, thinking he may have been reading her note, but he didn't seem interested in it. She sent it off to Connor, promising to let him know the instant she was free to go out.

Bea and Ris and Hugo came to visit, and they and Lily sat on the floor of Teddy's room eating lunch. Teddy listened to their conversation without saying much. After they left Lily came back in with a book and some potions, he asked, "What happened between you and Hugo?"

"What do you mean?" She set her book on the chair by the head of Teddy's bed and set the potions in a row on his desk, tapping the top of the first one with her wand so it warmed a little.

"I mean you didn't act that naturally around all of them, but especially around Hugo."

"Oh." Lily leaned forward to check the level of the potion she was pouring into Teddy's medicine cup. "We had a falling out a couple of years ago, and we're only just now resolving it."

"But what was the falling out about?"

"Sorry." Lily turned to face Teddy and saw that his eyes were on her. "I keep forgetting—I told you about it when it happened, but I guess that doesn't count now. I made up some lies about Ris and Hugo and a few about Bea, too, and they figured out that I was the one starting the rumours and confronted me. Do you want the sleeping potion or do you want to try sleeping without it?"

"Wait." Teddy held up a hand. "Why would you do that? Lie about your friends?"

Lily sighed. "You didn't use to judge me," she muttered, attempting unsuccessfully to soften the words with a smile. "I wanted to be the one in control. I thought if they didn't trust anybody else—not even each other—then I'd be the most important person in each of their lives. I don't know. Luckily for me and everyone else it backfired." She held out the sleeping potion. "Yes or no?"

"But I still don't get it. You don't—"

"Look," Lily interrupted. "It was two years ago and I was stupid. I guess I had an inferiority complex or something. I'd really rather not rehash it. Now, would you prefer to take your sleeping potion or not?"

"One more night," he said, as he'd been saying for the past week.

Lily poured the sleeping potion into the mixture and handed him the glass. He took it and said, "Sorry."

She shook her head. "No apologies, remember?"

He downed the glass in one gulp and handed it back to her. "Let me know if you ever want to talk about—it. I promise I won't judge."

Lily sat on the chair by his bed and opened her book. "Easier said than done, but thanks."

:::

Albus came home four weekends after Teddy's revival; he burst into Teddy's room while Lily was cutting his hair, blue-turned-brown strands floating in the air as the door flew open.

"Teddy! Merlin fuck!" Albus threw himself at his god-brother and Lily just managed to get out of the way of a half-wrestling hug.

Albus pulled away with strands of Teddy's hair stuck to his jeans and his t-shirt. "Merlin, I didn't believe it, but I couldn't get away from work until just this weekend and oh my fuck, Teddy, I can't believe it."

"Imagine how I'm feeling. Last time I saw you you were shorter than Lily. And now you're an adult with a job that keeps you away from home on weekends." Teddy threw a glance at Lily, and she waved her wand and cleared away the hair from the bed and the floor and Al. "Much more dignified. Thanks, Lil."

"Thought it might help." Usually when he was feeling panicked Lily took Teddy's hands, the way she had the first night he broke down in front of her, but Albus was in her way and besides, she didn't like the way her brother was looking between the two of them.

"Fuck, Teddy. How are you feeling?" Albus sat down in Lily's usual chair and Lily drifted to the door. She could hear her parents in the living room and she figured they could use help getting Al's room set up for his surprise visit home.

"My healer says I'm doing well," Teddy said, with the air of someone announcing their impending doom. "Lily, wait."

Lily turned in the doorway. Al glanced over his shoulder at her, his eyes bright green and curious. Teddy was pleading with her silently, his eyebrows drawn in over his nose, asking her to stay.

"Oh, I forgot." Lily crossed the room and poured a small tumbler of Teddy's calming solution. The way his eyes looked, he could do with some, even if it was not strictly in his medical regimen for the day.

She handed him the glass and then perched on the end of his bed as he sipped it. "So, Al, how is work going?" she prompted.

"Good. We've got this mad dragon on the reserve right now, pretty sure it's a cross between a Hungarian Horntail and a Chinese Fireball, and Merlin, the number of times we've all almost died."

"Where'd you get him?" Teddy asked, his blanketed feet pressing almost imperceptibly against Lily's thigh.

"Someone brought in an egg—claimed he found it in a crevice in the Highlands. Beyond me, really. For all we know he bred it himself and then realised he knew fuck all about raising dragons. We take everything, no questions asked. If it breathes fire, it's ours."

"Any new burns?" Lily asked, leaning forward.

"A few. This thing is a beast, like I said." Al tugged up his left sleeve to show them a shiny red ropy burn snaking around his wrist and winding up to his elbow.

"That's actually pretty badass."

"Cheers." Al tugged his sleeve down. "Don't either of you tell Mum or Dad, though. They're already worried about me enough as it is."

"We're worried about what?" Harry asked from the doorway, and Al jumped. Teddy chuckled as Lily stood and ruffled Albus's hair on her way to her father.

"Al was just saying they've got a darling new dragon in. He didn't want you to know because it's a bit of a monster, but aren't they all, really?"

"That's it?" Harry glanced from Teddy to the back of Albus's head. His neck was thankfully pale, although Lily knew from the look on Teddy's face that Albus's cheeks were flushed red.

"That, and that he's the one assigned to tending it." Lily's voice carried undercurrents of the glee she used to feel when she was little and telling on her brothers. Harry sighed.

"Albus, your mother and I want to know what you're up to. You are working with dragons; we do realise that's dangerous."

"Sure, Dad." Al didn't turn around.

"In other news, will you both come help your mother with dinner? We're going to be eating in here with Teddy, so I need to set up the room."

"Sure." Lily waved at Teddy and Albus followed her a few seconds later, once he'd gotten his blushing under control.

"You'd be a much better liar if your face didn't change colour so easily," Lily told him as they pulled plates and cutlery from the cabinets.

"Yeah, well, you'd be a much worse liar if you hadn't had to cover for me and my blushing so frequently, so, really, I don't see why you're complaining."

"I'm not complaining, just remarking."

Ginny came in then, pulled a casserole dish out of the oven, and disappeared down the hall again. Albus reached for Lily's wrist as she was pulling some knives from the drawer.

"I never told you...I'm really impressed and amazed with what you did for Teddy."

"Thanks, Al." Lily smiled at him and he nodded and let go. Ginny reappeared in the doorway.

"Lil, can you go get your desk chair? The dining room chairs won't fit around the table your dad's setting up in Ted's room, but I think yours is small enough."

"Sure." Lily set the knives down on the pile of plates Al had placed on the counter.

"I'll get it," Al said. "I need to go up and drop my bag in my room, anyway."

"All right." Lily gathered the place settings and carried them to Teddy's room, where her dad was lengthening the end table so it would fit four chairs around it. She set the plates and cutlery down and helped her mum carry out the rest of the food, and still Albus hadn't reappeared with her desk chair.

She made it to the top of the first flight of stairs before she found him. He was halfway down the flight leading to her attic bedroom, and he stopped when he saw her at the top of the lower stairs. He held a piece of parchment in his hand, and it—his hand, the parchment, all of him—was shaking.

"Al? What's that?" But Lily thought she knew what it was. The envelope she'd managed to keep out of sight on Christmas, which she'd tugged from the ages of Tales of Beedle the Bard, tossed on her desk and then forgotten about.

"It was addressed to me, so I thought—well, why not read it?"

"Because I hadn't given it to you, maybe." Lily was afraid, suddenly. Albus's voice was loud, too loud for the quiet of the house. "Al—"

"No." He glanced behind her, eyes narrowing. Lily looked over her shoulder and saw that her parents were crowding at the base of the stairs, looking up at them. From this angle they looked absurd—short and shadowed.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked.

Albus shook his head, lifted the shaking letter up, and began reading. Lily felt her heart stutter.

"For Albus, in the event that I am not well."

"I kept meaning to throw it away," Lily interrupted, more for her parents' benefit than Al's. He'd already read it, and he was livid.

"Albus," Ginny began, but Al spoke over her, reading.

"Teddy's just been left downstairs and everyone's talking around the problem and speaking softly like he's just sleeping but everyone is so sad, so sad, and so I think he won't be waking up again. So I guess he's not just sleeping. But he's still alive, and it's awful, the way he's hanging on. I think it's sadder than death. I think being alive like that would be worse than be dead, to be honest, and honesty is what you're getting from me now, because if you're reading this then you've gone to Beedle the Bard for comfort or something and I am like Teddy, or worse. I know it's a lot to ask but if I am like Teddy, or worse, would you please find a way to kill me? I'd rather be dead than be like that.

"Thanks very much and I'm sorry to use you but you understand, don't you? Love you."

Albus's voice sounded the most incredulous on the "love you," as if he couldn't quite believe those words, given that the rest was true.

"I told you," Lily said, "I meant to throw it away," her voice sounding weak to even her.

"You wrote this," Albus's voice was shaking, "sorry, you wrote this when you were eight? You wanted me to kill you, me, Lily, you wanted me to kill you when you were eight?"

Lily heard footsteps on the stairs and her father's hands settled on her shoulders, gripping them so tight she thought he meant to keep her there, on that step, forever. Her mother was behind him, she could feel their closeness without turning around.

She inhaled a shaky breath. "I wouldn't ask you to do it now. I guess I was just scared, of Teddy, and what had happened, and what it meant. I never—I mean, when I was little I wasn't thinking about how horrible that letter would sound—whether I was dying or not—and so I wrote it and forgot about it, mostly."

"I was ten, Lily. Why on earth would you have—I couldn't have—I would never have." Albus was breathing hard, his hands fisting the letter into a crumpled mess.

"Albus," Lily said, voice breaking. "I never ever would have had you read that, honestly."

"Except you wrote it, and I assume you meant it." His voice came out ragged.

"I was eight!" Lily burst, shaking beneath her father's grip. Her parents still hadn't said anything, and their silent presence worried her more than Al's palpable anger. "Please, please, this cannot become a big deal. This was ten years ago. Do you even—ten years! Ten years ago, you could have sat me down, tried to tell me why you kept Teddy lying there, ostensibly alive, really, I thought then, so very dead, but now—" Lily shook her head. "Albus," she said, "Albus, Albus, Al. I'm so sorry," her voice caught on a dry sob, "so sorry that I never got rid of that letter. I just never thought about it. I really didn't."

"But you," he said, like he'd done earlier, "you wanted me to kill you, Lily. Don't you see how selfish that is?"

"As selfish as keeping me alive when I didn't want to be?" Lily asked, her voice clogged.

A sound shook the house. It was a small sound, a slippery one. Something heavy hitting the ground. Lily whirled out of her father's grip and pushed past her mother. She leapt over the final four stairs and didn't stop at the bottom, barely breathing as she flew to Teddy's room.

He sat on the floor, his long tired legs straight in front of him, his hands pressed palms-down into the floorboards as he tried to lift himself up. He succeeded in hovering there, but even as he bent his legs Lily knew he wasn't going to stand. Even with a walker he hadn't managed more than three shuffling steps in the time since they woke him up.

"Teddy," Lily breathed.

"Don't." He looked at her, and then at her family, who had come in and fanned behind her.

"Let me help—" Albus stepped past Lily.

"Don't." Teddy relaxed his arms and lowered himself to sit completely on the floor. He covered his face with his hands. Lily thought if he lowered them and opened his eyes they would be black, pupils and irises—his colour for self-loathing.

"Teddy," she repeated. "Please."

He shook his head.

"I'm—"

"No apologies," he ground out, his voice sounding much more serious than hers ever had when she told him the same thing. "That's what you're always saying, right? But, damn, I should always be the one who's apologising." And then he opened his eyes, and they were black, and glazed with tears. "I asked you," he said. Lily heard her mother inhale, heard her father's soft, sad sigh. "I asked you what happened to you. And you said you grew up."

"I did."

"You did," he agreed. "You did, but you grew up with your comatose god-brother in your bedroom. That's what did it, isn't it? You were thinking about dying at eight, Lily. You wrote that note and two weeks before you were playing with olives. Look, just. Just don't, please."

Lily started forward, but a sudden pressure hit her. She stared through the thickening air at Teddy. He hadn't been able to use magic since the coma, not anything beyond his Metamorphmagus skills, and now he was using it to keep her out. To keep her away.

"Look, Ted. Let me help you." Albus moved through the space as if it was normal air. He lifted Teddy back to his bed and when Lily stepped back, across the terrible emptiness of Teddy's room, she felt the air loosen around her. He was letting her leave him. She wondered if he meant for this distance to last.